MF-W, I never saw your email on the proposed LPP changes at the time. What's more, I just looked through my email again, and still didn't see it. I only found your response when I looked at the online archive of the private list. I don't know what happened
there, but I really was not trying to ignore any input. I promise you that, and apologize that it must appear otherwise.
That is credible to me; that's a somewhat known bug I think. I also sometimes don't receive a certain mail from a mailing list and am then surprised when an answer to such a mail appears.
I will not post the proposed changes live today at all. I will move them back to my sandbox, unhide them, and incorporate many of your comments. Look
here (perhaps an hour after this email): Just a few points in response to that email:
- The reason I added the introductory remark is that people always keep asking why such-and-such project is allowed (Latin Wikipedia is often cited) when it goes against policy. I added
that line to forestall the constant questions. If you don't think it should stay, that's fine, but that's why I put it.
I see. If kept, I'd rewrite it with something that doesn't necessitate explaining the term "grandfathered". It could also be put at the introduction to the policy page (section "The language committee processes requests...") right now, I guess.
- New point 1 was old point 1, too. (It's not actually a new point.) The only thing that actually changed was a footnote leading to the place where completely new projects can be requested.
On the current version of the page you'll see that. I can remove if you want, but it was already there.
(Must have been some problem with the automatic numbering wrt the points). The footnote is new, isn't it? I suggest putting the link to "Proposals for new projects" into the text instead of a footnote, as a compromise [I dislike footnotes ;)]
- Point 2 included the BCP 47 issue already. But I will remove the 2/3 vote bit.
- Point 3: I will shorten the macrolanguage part.
- Point 4: Concerning ancient languages:
- I was confused, then, by what happened with Coptic. When I went back just now and looked at the discussion on Coptic in July 2017, what I saw didn't really say much on a Coptic Wikipedia;
it spoke more to the possibility of a Wikisource and of interface translation, with some people saying that potentially they could see a Coptic Wikipedia being allowed in the future. Then you marked the project on-wiki as "eligible".
Ehm wow. I'm surprised that that happened.
- It seems to me that it will be hard to say that Coptic can be eligible but Ancient Greek cannot. I tried to write that provision narrowly, so as to capture Ancient Greek without opening
the door to every ancient language in history. I do think, especially given Coptic, that we need to allow Ancient Greek. But if the Committee thinks it's better to say "we decided to allow it notwithstanding policy as an exception", that's OK.
As I said in the mail from 30 Dec, I think we need a fundamental decision on principles of what ancient languages should be allowed, if any.
- I think Wikipedia is different from other projects with respect to ancient languages, though. I think it's entirely reasonable to imagine that someone who knows Latin or Ancient Greek
might go to those Wikipedias to look up something about Rome or Athens. (That's certainly as reasonable as someone going to Jamaican Creole Wikipedia to look up something about Jamaica.) I don't think I can really see that someone would go to an Ancient Greek
or Latin Wikivoyage to look at travel issues, even about Rome or Athens. That's why I handled those differently.
That makes sense (though I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with some unexpected usecases, though maybe not for Wikivoyage).